


We're Catching Bullets With Our Teeth

by skyline



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Camp Chitaqua, F/M, M/M, also a bunch of S3 references because I dig hellhounds, angst angst angst, can you be in love with your brother sans angst?, this probably doesn't qualify as fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 06:57:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8614120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyline/pseuds/skyline
Summary: There’s a whole list of things Dean Winchester is getting too old to outrun. His nightmares are right at the top.





	

People call Niagara Falls romantic.

Since Dean just ganked a shapeshifter plain behind the dumpsters next to TGIFriday’s…yeah, he isn’t finding much worth writing a sonnet about here.

Even sans blood, the blaring lights of the main drag are putting the Vegas strip to shame. All the neon and garishness is getting Dean in the mood, a bit – cheap whiskey and the ding ding ding of slots have a special place in his heart – but none of it is _romcom_ material.

“How would you even know?” Sam demands, full on bossy-bitch temper out and proud. He’s got gore splattered down the front of his dark shirt, and he’s carefully buttoning one of those retro, seventies monstrosities of his over it. “When was the last time you watched a chick flick?”

It’s a fair point. Romance isn’t really Dean’s gig.

It doesn’t have to be. He’s Dean Winchester, and Dean Winchester is good at two things:

Killing stuff, and taking care of Sam.

Sex is a close third, but if sex and romance were really all that interlinked, then Dean probably wouldn’t have had time to have fucked his way through half the continental U.S.

“Fine, this place is real-life frickin’ Casablanca,” he retorts, swiping a smear of blood at his throat with the worn edge of his leather jacket. “Can we get some goddamned pie already?”

Sam glances around, frowning. Thick, dark bangs fall into his eye, and he petulantly pushes them back, allowing, “I could go for pie.”

“Atta boy.”

Dean falls into step beside his brother, the sun-bleached asphalt burning through the rubber on his boots. Today was a shitshow, but it’s over now, and the night is unfolding with everything he likes.

There’s the ripped vinyl booths in the tourist trap of a restaurant they choose, the weary-but-smiling waitress with her stained apron and her minimum wage enthusiasm. The walls are peeling paint that falls three shades short of cheerful, but man, does it shoot for the stars.

The try-hard black and white prints of the Falls, hanging in cheap frames, add to that tacky-ambiance, to that almost-home feel. They spent their childhood in places like this, cheap family restaurants highway-side, diners and roadhouses and electric-lit bars, motel buffets with tobacco stains on the carpet and wilted lettuce in the water-spoiled, fake-metal frames of the salad bars.

Back then everything was bloodstained nights and long, innocent days, training poolside on concrete that smelled like too many chemicals, too much chlorine, with their dad lording over it all.

And fuck if Dean didn’t love every second of it, Americana the best babysitter he ever had; dealing out all this new wisdom, hits and highs, patchwork knowledge to pass on to Sam. He still does love it, really, affection rooted deep in his heart.

Maybe that’s why the aroma of discount breakfast foods and the working class helps the tension in his shoulders unknit.

Dean orders a drink and checks out their serving girl’s ass when she walks away. Doesn’t matter that she’s pushing fifty; lady’s stayed fit.

“Seriously, dude?” Sam rolls his eyes, but he’s used to it, he’s used to every nuance of this.

It’s all fucking routine.

“Lighten up,” Dean advises. “We’re headed to Reno, and the drive will be hell on that stick up your ass.”

Sam sneers, but Sam always sneers, and that’s familiar too. He’s Sam, Dean’s Sammy, the little boy that was a fan favorite of every prostitute between Burlington and Carson City, Baton Rouge and Richland. They’d card wildcat red nails through the thick, road-dust matted curl of his hair at six, ten, twelve, fourteen; scritch behind his neck while he was laser-focused on algebra problems at a splintered bar top, fighting back a nervous flush because he never did love being the center of attention.

Dean doesn’t either, but he’s low key about it. He’ll soak up the love from girls or demons, rednecks or angels, and as long as no one catches him out, sees the man under the scars and the swagger, he’s A-Okay.

Even now, when the waitress walks back with a glass full of amber and a flirty smile, he turns up the charm, draws her attention like a moth to a flame.

Routine, yeah?

The part where she switches her gaze over to Sam – same boy Dean watched sprout up and broaden up under strange, unfamiliar hands, claws at his shoulders and side – makes something burn hot and tight in Dean’s chest. But that’s familiar too, because it always did, from the working girls to sweet high school coquettes to now, from the beginning of time on into forever.

It’s a repeating pattern, so it’s easy enough to act like Dean’s the one who’s been snubbed, easy enough to pretend he doesn’t wish their waitress would stop staring at Sammy like he’s on the menu.

Dean tries to win her affections back, because it’s expected, it’s part of an act, but he doesn’t work for it too hard. She saunters away with a charmed grin but no offer of more, not to either brother.

Dean didn’t want her anyway. This is his and Sam’s last night in a long line of last nights, and when Sam reaches under the table and touches his knee, Dean settles back into the booth and calms.

He finishes the final bite of his burger and cocks an eyebrow. “What do you think? Should we call it a night?”

“Won’t the bars miss you?” Sam feigns surprise, but he’s never been much good at faking.

Dean tilts his chin, a perfect mix of arrogant and self-assured. “They’ll survive without me for a night.”

Soon enough, it’s going to be longer than that. Eternity, if they don’t figure out a way to stop what’s coming…

He bristles, refusing to think about that. He’s got Sammy in front of him, warm and solid and incredibly alive, and when he gets him back to the motel, maybe, just maybe, he’ll work up the nerve to-

“You’re going to hell,” Sam says softly, fingers still angled around the curve of Dean’s knee.

In the distance, Dean hears the baying of hounds, a high, eerie sound. He swallows, hard. “No.”

This isn’t right. It’s too soon. He still has…weeks. A month, nearly.

The hellhounds howl, feral and slavering. Sam’s gaze darkens, and his nail dig into Dean’s skin through denim. “You’re going to hell, Dean, and I’m going to follow you down.”

“No,” Dean repeats, because Sam doesn’t even sound like Sam anymore. His voice has this smooth carelessness, the rasp of ages. He sounds like the devil, but that’s impossible, because they haven’t even met Lucifer yet, not here, not now. “No. No. No.”

“Face it, Dean,” Sam’s voice scrapes over Dean’s ears, and he’s smiling – a wrong, ghoulish thing. “You’re going to drag me down into the muck with you, and I’ll kick and I’ll scream. And then I’ll die.”

“Sammy-“

“Sammy isn’t here anymore.”

* * *

 

Dean bolts awake.

Sweat clings to the curve of his abdomen and the hollows of his throat, his pulse a constant, panicked throb. He’s panting like he’s trying to catch a scream in the back of his mouth.

Those words off Sam’s tongue…

He curses and shoves a hand through his hair.

He was happy, at first, with Sam gone. Relieved. All the drama, all the pain – it became distant. Like it had happened to somebody else.

But as weeks turned to months turned to a year, then two, then three, the ache in Dean’s chest grew, chasm-like and unbearable. That short lived euphoria of relief consolidated into dead weight in his chest, because he’d always lived by one truth, and its name is Sam.

And now…well.

There’s a whole list of things Dean Winchester is getting too old to outrun. His nightmares are right at the top.

Niagara, though. That one’s particularly bad; an old memory that aches and twinges.

Hell’s bastards were at his heels, every day laced through with terror. But Sam was there too. So close that Dean could touch him.

So completely unaware of how much Dean wanted to.

It was torture, but it was magnificent, and Dean doesn’t have anything like that now. No more sundrenched mornings with Sam’s rumpled hair and puppy dog pout a few feet and a bed away; nor diner-afternoons, taste buds tangy with blueberry pie and the hunt running through both of their veins. No more evenings tinged in gold, either, not with gas station Doritos or his little brother’s laughter.

It’s all an echo now. It haunts and haunts and haunts.

Dean shoves up off the bed, his sheets soft in their threadbare disarray. Floorboards creek under his naked feet, and that’s weird too, after a whole lifetime of falling asleep with his boots on, ready to hit the road running.

He hasn’t got anywhere to go, now.

Distantly, he can hear the murmur of voices, the Camp waking up for the day.

It’s barely past dawn, the horizon lit blood orange. The chain link fence rattles when the wind picks up, shivers and shakes like a dead man’s bones under crackling firelight.

Dean pushes open the door, his toes curling around the edge of the frame.

Thin, strong arms wrap around his middle. Hot breath forewarns the soft brush of lips against his neck. “Nightmares?”

Dean turns in the circle of Risa’s embrace, pressing a kiss against the tip of her nose. “I can handle it.”

“Tough guy.” She stands on her tippy-toes and presses her mouth to his, swift and heated. “Come back to bed.”

Dean doesn’t know when temptation stopped being such a close friend.

He shakes his head, “Long day ahead.”

The corners of Risa’s mouth slant downward.

She already suspects him – of growing disinterested, of fucking around – and she’s right to, probably. These years since he set up Camp, he’s dated. Frequently, if not as fervently.

But the camaraderie always feels like a lie, empty of the one thing that made Dean’s life worth living.

That’s probably why it always ends the same way, like this, with Dean the bad guy.

That’s okay. His brother is the devil and Dean is a bad, bad guy.

Love is the only mythology he knows.

He shrugs off Risa’s hurt as if it doesn’t touch him, and she retreats back into the cabin as silently as a ghost. Dean does not watch her get dressed, but his gaze follows the bird-wings of her shoulder blades when she storms out into the morning.

He waits to feel…something.

(Exhaustion and the vague sense of guilt that are his constant companions don’t count.)

Nothing stirs.

It’s shit outside, everything emaciated and brown. Not like that time in Niagara. What really happened after they left that diner was:

The world was on fire, autumn bright peeking between the industrial gray and neon. Fall leaves shaped triangles of light and shadow across Sam’s cheekbones, and Dean had thought if he’d die soon, at least he had that; Sam in sunset and flame, fierce in his head, behind his eyelids, imprinted on his brain.

His fingers were furnace-hot where they twined with Dean’s, but-

But that was a long time ago, and here and now Dean shivers with cold.

“Dean! Dean!!!” Across the lawn, Chuck yells, “Cas won’t quit playing the bongos. Again.”

“Man, I told him not before 10 am,” Dean bitches, making his way out onto the splintered porch of his cabin. The wood is freezing and rotten in turn.

Chuck scowls. “I made sure to mention that. He’s _watched the trek of eons and witnessed how fragile human concepts like time stifle creativity. You uninspired little man_.”

Dean cocks an eyebrow. “Cas called me little?”

“No, he called me little! And uninspired!” Chuck’s face twists into a pout. “I’m god’s mouthpiece.”

“Chuck.” Dean clasps Chuck on the shoulder, mostly to watch him wince. Mission success: Dean lets go. “By now I thought you would’ve learned.”

“Learned what?” Chuck asks, watching Dean shove his feet into boots, sockless and chilly. 

Dean laughs without humor. “There is no god.”

* * *

 

He makes his way across deadened grass, rough and dry in patches of sunlight, soggy and moldering in the shade of the cabins.

Earlier they had wildflowers, whole fields of lavender, homey, comforting, fresh. The scent never quite covered the stench of unwashed bodies, cannabis and desperation, but Dean still missed it when it faded and dulled, the vibrancy of spring worn down in the late summer heat, withering through autumn, and with winter dying, dead, gone.

“Yo, Cas! _Castiel_ ,” Dean shouts.

Cas’s door opens a crack, framing one dark, bloodshot eye. Pleasantly, he croaks, “Dean,” and swings it back wider. His hands against the wood are thick with green stains and the rich scent of vegetation.

Cas has a hydroponic garden he feeds from the creek. They might be eating contaminants with their tomatoes, but they may die tomorrow anyway.

It’s all about perspective.

Dean steps into the cabin, past Castiel. The stupid bongos are resting in a corner, the radio buzzing with static and the occasional blip of atonal words. The only thing the damned thing plays anymore are readouts on old numbers stations, still maintained by survivors with standing orders from a dead Commander in Chief.

(Or hell, maybe there are still subs out there. Skyking warplanes in retreat and skeleton crews in underground silos, pristine, with crews untouched by the disease).

“We need to talk,” Dean tells Cas, spinning the dial on the old radio until they’re left in blissful silence.

“Am I in trouble?” Cas asks, in the disinterested voice of someone who is very, very used to trouble.

“Bongos, Cas? Seriously?”

“They calm the savagery at my core.” Cas glances towards the corner, where the instruments loom. “Would you like to try?”

“Bashing you over the head? Sounds grand.”

“Shame we don’t have a doctor to pull that massive badger out of your ass,” Cas does something that isn’t quite an eye roll, because he’s yet to master that particular move. “I can’t believe Chuck tattled on me.”

Dean sighs, his shoulders relaxing. “I can’t have you and him at each other’s throats. You’re my best men.”

“Charlie’s your best man,” Cas corrects, one hundred percent sincere.

Dean winces. “Don’t tell her that. She’ll get a big head.”

He slumps back, the roughhewn wood of the cabin walls picking at his thin shirt. He helped build this shithole, back when things went South.

Cas worked alongside him, bare-chested and grimy, determined to assist in any way he could.

Bitterness has worn Castiel down since then, but Dean will never forget that- the flash of his smile, lightning fast and just as bright. There was innocence there, and delight in the world.

Things Cas seems to have forgotten, now.

Dean wishes Cas would smile more.

He wishes he’d been what Cas expected.

All those years of systematic torture. Flaying his skin. Flaying his heart.

And then: ten years as a monster. Ten years losing track of his own humanity, followed by blinding light and sun. Dean was so desperate not to go back; a changeling emulating the man he used to be. Because of this man, the angel, his savior.

But he couldn’t even accept possession by an archangel, not for Castiel. Not for anyone.

He couldn’t give up himself, and it lead them all to ruin.

Dean will never know how to say why it went down this way. He’ll never be able to tell Cas that Hell wasn’t the first time he surrendered.

The first time.

That time.

Sam’s fingers had twined with Dean’s, and fuck, fuck, he was not rip-roaring drunk, had no excuse for any of this. They were standing outside this crap-shed of a motel in Niagara Falls.

They’d raced each other there, from the hunt, from the kill. Dean still felt the burn in his thighs, down his knees, the shock as each footfall rocketed up his body.

He was running and he was laughing, and Sam was at his heels until he caught Dean’s hand, and.

And.

“Sammy,” Dean had said, back then, pulling away. “What’re you doin’?”

“Dude, stop. Don’t.” Sam glowered, anger and disappointment and _want_ all mixed up, his little brother through and through. “You can’t keep treating me like I’m some dumb kid one day, then turning around and acting like I’m-“

He faltered, and that’s where Dean was lost.

“Everything?” Dean asked quietly. “You are, Sammy.”

“- _that_. You can’t act like that.” Sam’s eyes were splintered with gold, russet, and green. “You put me on a pedestal-“

“Since when?” Dean snapped. He needed the interruption to fight the fire on his skin and the ice in his veins. “I give you more shit than anyone.”

Fierce as fuck, Sam shot back, “ _Shut up_. You put me on a pedestal, and I topple off every time I mess up. Which is more often than I want, Dean. Do you even get how much that sucks?”

He pushed Dean then, fingers catching in the lapels of his leather jacket.

They stayed there.

Lamely, Dean tried, “You’re not…I don’t.”

“You do. You worship me one second and I’m your kid brother the next, but we never move past that.”

Dean opened his mouth to stop this, to say something, _damnit_ , but-

Sam’s breath was quick against his cheek, too rapid and spitfire warm. “If I’m perfect you can’t touch me. If I’m not, you’ve got a reason to be mad.”

Gruff, Dean asked, “What are you trying to say?”

His knees were weak from proximity. Like a fucking girl.

“I’m saying…I’m asking. What are you afraid of?”

Helplessly, Dean had said, “You act like I’m trying to keep my distance.”

“Aren’t you?” Sam asked. He did that thing where he presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth, trying desperately to keep everything in check.

“Yeah. Maybe,” Dean scoffed. He was trembling. He was not trembling. He didn’t know what he was. “That doesn’t change anything. The way I-“ he would not say _feel_ , “The way things are.”

“It’s my fault you’re going-“ Sam caught the words, swallowing them down. “You’re going. You’re not going anywhere. But even so. This once, Dean, don’t push me away.”

Cas blows a cloud of pot laced angel-breath in Dean’s direction, chasing away Sam and his voice, sloe-eyed in the shadow of motel that’s probably been burned to the ground.

Dean coughs, heart stuttering in his chest. “Jesus, Cas, open a damn window.”

Cas grumbles something that sounds like _buzzkill_.

It probably is, because Cas is rude now. Dean bites his tongue. “No more bongos, man. I’ve gotta head out on a run. You coming?”

“I’ve got yoga at noon,” Cas replies coolly.

He dangles his blunt between his fingers, the invitation clear as day.

“I hate you. From the bottom of my heart. Sincerely.”

“You’re lying,” Cas says.

He might not have wings anymore, but his bullshit detector’s spot on.

* * *

 

Camp Chitaqua is the kind of place that convinces a man he can be a hero.

Heroic is the last thing Dean’s felt in years, so it’s more of a tagline for the tourists.

He checks the fortifications twice a day. From the salt lines in cabins to the devil’s traps on the outskirts of the fence, he eyeballs them all. Which, yeah, he’s a paranoid bastard.

But his paranoia’s paid off in spades, so who cares?

Becky, Charlie, and Chuck watch him kneel by the trap that lines the concrete outside the gate, never mind that a gajillion smaller versions are etched into the chain link.

Cas came too, but he’s staring at the sky, the same vaguely betrayed, determined look on his face that he always wears when he’s dragged away from pot and girls and Peruvian pan-flute music.

They wait for Dean to be satisfied. Then they’re off, journeying to a new town so they can pick through garbage, sniffing out food.

The Croatan virus ravaged the tiny hamlet of Megiddo, same as it did the rest of the world.

It ain’t the apocalypse that was prophesized, but it’s an apocalypse all the same. Dean sidesteps a discarded tricycle and mutters, “It’s like God wanted the world to end in misery.”

“No.” Cas is adamant. “We’re not meant to be miserable. It’s just the easiest form of entropy.”

Becky ignores them both, prattling on about some book series she grabbed in the last drive by on Small Town, Nowhere, and Dean can’t stand a moment of it.

But Charlie nods and smiles, interested, even when she’s up to her elbows in muck. She says they should check the husk of a local bookstore for the next volume, and Becky squeals, delighted by the idea. Her nails are bloodstains, rust-red polish catching the light when she claps.

Then, wistful, she says, “It’s not as good as Supernatural, though. I don’t think anything ever will be,” and fuck does that sting.

Becky covers her mouth a half-beat after the words spill out, but it’s too late. Everyone’s looking at Dean.

They all know the truth. He’s gone five years without talking to his kid brother, and somehow it feels a lot like forty years in hell. But all Dean does is straighten his back and stretch, his shadow a lean black specter against the pavement. “You should check out that bookstore. We’ve got to keep moving.”

Becky is overenthusiastic, and Charlie guards her back with a gun and a smile that looks like a razor’s edge.

“Are you okay?”

Dean startles, not sure when Chuck got so close, not liking how he’s watching Dean like he sees too much.

“Are you?” Dean counters, because Chuck hates these outings. His fear is so acute, written in bold across the lines of his face, but he comes, every time. Chuck might have the guts of a bunny rabbit, but he tries to be brave, and in Dean’s book that’s what counts.

He sidesteps Dean’s pointed question and replies, “I mean because…” He glances in the direction Becky and Charlie fled. “She didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I’m fine,” Dean says.

“You don’t love when people bring up Sam, is all.”

Castiel is paying attention now, because Castiel is a big, feathered eavesdropper.

He hates it when Dean is introspective, hates it when he’s sad, and there’s a part of Cas that always figures what happened to Sam is his fault. He and Dean are too much alike, that way, too ready to bear the cross, to take the fall, but this time Dean knows the blame is exclusively his.

He grimaces. “Sam? Sam who? I barely even remember the guy.”

“Please,” Chuck snorts. “You and Sam, it’s always you and Sam. I’m surprised you’ve stayed at camp this long – you two are Orpheus and Eurydice.”

“I have zero fucking idea what that means,” Dean retorts, and if he’s lying, no one checks him on it.

Chuck merely looks at him with those big, watery brown eyes of his and murmurs, “It means you’d go to hell just to get your kid brother back.”

“He wouldn’t,” Castiel interrupts. “Not this time. Not again.”

Dean doesn’t correct him, and Chuck doesn’t either, but they both know Cas is wrong.

* * *

 

For a long time, he thought it was like this: all Sam ever knew how to do was leave.

But it wasn’t like that, not really. Sam grew up a Winchester, and that meant blood, and that meant terror, and that meant death. Being a Winchester was a lot of things that no little boy should ever have to face, and Dean acknowledged that even as he embraced it.

Because if there was one thing he was really, really good at, it was being Dean Winchester.

He was great at it, and he was great at being a brother. And all he ever really wanted was to keep Sam happy. Life was rough – he couldn’t protect Sam from that – but he tried, didn’t he? He did his best.

He did too well.

Dean was Sam’s hero, a knight, a king, and there was something in that that was strange, sick, _twisted_.

Sam knew it better than Dean ever did, because Sam was smarter than Dean ever would be. All the times he got mad, all the times he set out on his own, every time he tried to find an identity independent of his brother; it all sprung from the same place, the same desperate desire for _normal_.

Dean tried to tell him a million times. Normal is the farthest thing in the world from being a Winchester. But Sam never listened. He bolted each and every time things got too deep. That was his MO.

Except for that one moment, when Sam asked Dean not to push him away, and Dean said, “Sammy, please, please don’t do this,” because Dean had been fighting with normal too.

All that time while he was struggling with how his kid brother had outgrown him, in arm span and in heart, he was also up to his elbows in girls. They were the only thing he ever had for himself, and he wasn’t an idiot – he saw the way Sam’s eyes followed each and every one of them – but they were Dean’s one thing. The one part of himself that wasn’t hunting, or protecting Sammy, the one thing he just couldn’t fail at.

He fucked his way across America, and Sam’s eyes watched him jealously. He learned to hide it behind an easygoing grin, like _high five man, way to go_ , right up until that night.

Tonight, when the Falls were lit in a kaleidoscope of color and the walls outside their cheap motel were peeling paint and cigarette stains.

“Dean,” Sam had insisted.

His mouth was a fever that burned out Dean’s soul.

* * *

 

Dean wakes in a scratchy-sheeted bed between Cas and a leggy blonde, their combined warmth nearly enough to melt the ice in his bones.

December’s moon is burgeoning yellow outside the window, a giant demon eye, and Dean wonders if Lucifer appreciates the irony in that.

He tries to extricate his arm from under Cas’s head, but that’s not working out, and when Cas wakes, his scowl is sleepy and all too sweet.

When the man was an angel, he was carved of marble, hard, gleaming surfaces that humanity has slowly but surely chipped away at. Dean feels responsible, somehow, like he’s the one who showed Castiel exactly how fucking great it is to be human and breakable.

But Dean feels responsible for a lot of things. The only demons he could never get a handle on live in his head.

“Nightmare?” Cas asks, even though it’s a given. Dean’s so sick of everyone asking. “Sam?”

Dean shrugs, because yeah. That boy _is_ a nightmare. He stalks through every single one of Dean’s dreams. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

Cas props himself up on one elbow, moonlight bathing him in silver, all over. “I can help you sleep.”

Dean eyes the girl tucked into his other side, who had more than a little help from Cas and his stash. Heavenly choirs wouldn’t wake her up.

“Pass.”

Cas frowns.

“That’s not what I meant.” His gravelly voice rumbles through Dean’s throat, lips pressed to skin. “I know better ways to tire you out.”

A little more awake, Dean tries to catch Cas’s ear with his tongue, his hands sliding across naked hips.

He does not remember the way Sam’s hipbones felt under his palms, sharper angles and hotter by degrees. He does not remember the way Sam moaned his name, the way he made _Dean_ a curse and a prayer.

Dean kisses Castiel and does not remember, but that doesn’t mean he forgets.

* * *

 

The sun’s still lying low when Dean sneaks out of Castiel’s cabin, past the burnt-out carcass of the Impala; this thing that meant the world, once.

But the whole wide world never meant as much as Sam, and that’s the whole damn problem.

Dean was warned, right? Zachariah warned him his life would go like this, and somehow Dean still thought he could shake the future free, brush it off like cobwebs; fragile, silken, gone.

He tried for a little bit.

He tried to fight fate, to believe in everything Sam was selling. People are nothing without free will.

Then he saw Sam’s vision of heaven, and saw how Sam didn’t believe in Dean right back. There was something about that, about Dean’s immutable faith in the power of blood that vanished that day. Sam was relegated to the realm of their father, to people Dean loved, but would never, ever be able to trust.

If only things had worked out the way they should have, and Zachariah's proselytizing had been nothing more than a scam.

If only Dean could forget Sam the way he wanted to.

He doesn’t even know why he’s surprised. Requited or not, his little brother is the only real thing Dean’s ever known.

But he can't kill him, and he can't shake him. So he’ll do things differently this time.

He won’t sacrifice Cas, or Risa, or the others. He’ll die a hero if nothing else, like it ever made a damn difference how a person died when there’s no one left to remember.

Dean touches the Impala’s hood and makes a wish.

As always, all his wishes are tied up in Sam.

* * *

 

There’s nothing like the open road, the dips of spring-grass valleys between the peaks of the Adirondacks, spotted cow hides flicking in and out of existence when the Impala hits seventy.

Or the oil fields out near Lost Hills, driving south with dust building high on the rubber of the tires, the smooth hum of drills as far as the eye can see and heat shimmering off the road, every new stretch of asphalt a sci-fi mirage.

At night, Dean and Sam used to drive through red-rock canyons, lone saguaro standing guard under full blue moons, or in the thick wood of the Pine Barrens, spindly tree trunks heavy with the shadows of starlight and passing clouds. They’d been everywhere in the lower forty-eight, from the gold-capped mesas to the flatlands of Texas, and Dean wouldn’t have had it any other way.

He used to be a little in love with this country, enthralled by speed and the rumble of his baby’s engine and the taste of every backwater diner’s seasonal variety of pie.

If he slowed down, if he stayed put, it would itch under his skin, a near-tangible chain pulling him out towards all that highway.

No one could ever, ever make him stop. Not until the world ended.

Maybe even now. The Impala turned to rust, but Dean’s got a rickety old truck and miles of road, all overgrown now; cracks splitting the asphalt and faded yellow paint.

He drives until he hits Detroit, and then he keeps going.

* * *

The roads outside Detroit are suspiciously easy to navigate, well kept and pothole free. The lack of flesh-hungry zombies is telling, as well; Lucifer knows he's coming. 

Dean squares his shoulders and tamps down the bubbling edge of hysteria. He'd hoped for this.

He's a reckless, suicidal idiot, but he'd hoped for it all the same.

He can't mull it over too long - before he can freak, he's there. He's there, and Sam is a star in the wavering dawn, bright despite the light of the sun.

His hair is a crown of brown-gold, and he blazes in the early morning light. Dean squints at him and says, “White’s not really your color.”

Sam-but-not-Sam folds his hands solemnly. “It’s hard to find a perfectly tailored suit these days, in any shade.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Whoever killed all the tailors, I’d imagine,” Lucifer replies.

In Sam’s voice. With Sam’s eyes. His chest heaving with Sam’s breaths, the same ones Dean used to count off like sheep when Sam was a baby.

Dean has to remind himself that this isn’t about killing Lucifer.

It’s about setting Sam free.

If only for a minute.

He lets out a breath held tight in his lungs. His hands bunch into fists and release. He takes a step closer, fingers digging into the seam of his own jeans.

He’s trying to be small and inoffensive. But he can’t help but blurt, “Ever thought about getting a haircut? The boyband you stole your do from wants it back.” 

“Is that what you came to ask me?”

An exhalation, a groan. Dean can do better than this.

“You know it isn’t,” he admits.

“Then?” Lucifer prompts. He crosses his arms and his biceps bulge, Sam’s muscles large under the snow-white suit. The devil’s wearing his skin, and he’s still handsome as sin. “I’m getting bored.”

“I need to see him.”

Dean’s words hang in the air for a beat, resonant.

Lucifer doesn’t pretend not to know what he means. Instead he shakes his head and says, “He’s standing right here.”

“Not _you_. Him. I can’t- _fucking breathe_ here, not without Sam.” Dean presses his palm against his chest, the dull thud of his heart an echo in his ears. “You win. You win. All that is over now. Just let me see my brother.”

It’s eerie, the thing living behind Sam’s eyes, a dark shadow lurking. Where Dean's baby brother is animated – bitchy, stubbornly fucking bullheaded, and gorgeously alive - Lucifer is lichen, growing under everything that Sam is.

He says, “Of course I win. I won a long time ago.”

“Yes. Absolutely. You’re king of the world,” Dean replies, his voice getting too loud. He's gruff the way he only gets when he's bordering on tears. “So do this one thing. Let Sam see…all of this.”

The garden they’re standing in is mostly brambles, the building Lucifer’s camped out in mostly rust. There’s not anything Sam would want to see on this godforsaken earth anymore, except Dean.

They both know it.

“No.”

“I know you can do it. I've seen demons-"

"Not a demon, Dean-o." Sam's mouth shapes the words, but the way he's watching Dean is alien and wrong, a poor facsimile of pity.

"Still. I know you can let me- please,” Dean begs, falling to his knees.

He never thought he’d do something like this, after hell. He never thought himself capable of surrendering so completely, ever again.

But that’s Sammy.

Always undoing him, for better or for worse. 

“Please,” Dean repeats, brokenly.

There’s not a single blessed reason in the world that Lucifer should listen. Dean’s half-counting on dying where he stands. But.

But.

But Lucifer is capricious, and he thrives off watching others hurt. Maybe he knows that this last act will irrevocably fuck Dean and Sam up forever, or maybe he’s just bored.

Who even cares? One second he’s grinning impishly at Dean, and the next second he’s Sam.

Tall, broad-shouldered, sun-dappled, beautiful Sam, and Dean has his arms around him with a desperate, wretched sound, trying to check _hisribshisboneshisheart_ , everything in its place.

“Dean,” Sam gasps, hugging him back just as fiercely, eyes startled and wild. “What are you doing? You can’t do this.”

“Can and I am, Sammy.”

“Stop. Get out of here, before he- before he comes back. Dean, please. You don’t know what it will do to me if-“ He stops, breath stuttering with fear. “You don’t know what you mean to me-“

“Of fucking course I do.”

“No,” Sam insists.

“ _Yes_ ,” Dean argues back. He remembers some town – Concrete – with the wishing well and the shadow of Mt. Baker looming overhead, where for a split second Sam could have had anything he ever wanted.

But what he wanted most was Lilith’s head on a platter, and Dean never believed it was bloodlust. That was revenge, plain and simple; Sam would never forget watching her hellhound’s savage attack, and he’d never forgive the months Dean spent down under. It meant more to him than riches, or _normalcy_.

It meant more to him than what he’d shared with Jess, and fuck if that wasn’t all kinds of messed up, but it was also all the proof Dean has ever needed.

He doesn’t know why he ever let himself forget it; anger and pride and hurt, and everything that he hates in himself, but nothing that matters now. “I know, Sam. I know.”

He kisses him then, hot, frenzied and needy, pulling Sam’s body up against his like he can anchor him here, away from Lucifer’s pull. He kisses Sam until they're both breathless with it, running his hands across Sam’s skin, up under the ugly-ass suit, counting Sam’s bones underneath his skin and thanking god for every single one.

When the sky is spinning and the pale hues of winter are tinged red at the edges and Dean's chest compresses from all the oxygen he's lost - that's when he begins to feel alright again.

“ _Dean_ ,” Sam stutters out, and it’s just like Niagara, where Dean was damned and time was short and every brush of their mouths might have been their last.

Sam knows it too. He’s just as reckless with joy, trying to get Dean’s jeans undone while he tugs at Dean’s hair, while he sucks on his lips.

Sam holds him down, sweet and low. He mouths wet across Dean’s throat and moans, small, wounded noises and words that sound like _love_.

No one else has ever made Dean feel like this.

He is certain that no one else ever could.

He gasps out, “Sammy,” and his little brother nods, frantic.

“I’ve got you, Dean. I’ve got you.”

They hold onto each other because there’s nothing else left. Because being a Winchester means blood and death and terror, but it also means this:

Sam and the road, and the road, and Sam.

There is paradise in the curve of Sam’s smile, and even if Dean’s going to die an hour, minutes, _seconds_ from now, he won't regret it.

Sam presses his fingers to Dean's forehead like a gun, brushing back his hair, and Dean surges against him.

He's ready to meet the end head-on.


End file.
